Recently, there is a Hong Kong drama, and the topic is quite high.
As soon as it was broadcast, it was on the hot search for its large scale.
Some viewers said that after watching it, they got "bubble tea ptsd". Because the deceased in the first episode, who had an accident drinking bubble tea, was inserted into the body by a stainless steel straw.
Such a thrilling plot is from TVB's new drama "Golden Night Building 2".
This drama, when the first season was broadcast three years ago, although it was a small-cost production, it won the third place in the ratings of the year, and it also became the highest-rated Hong Kong drama of the year in Douban.
Three years later, the second season of "Golden Curtain Building" returned, and the rating still remained above 8 points.
For Hong Kong drama fans, "Golden Night Building" is a surprise in recent years.
In the past, in the heyday of Hong Kong drama, in addition to workplace dramas, family dramas, criminal investigation dramas, and fantasy dramas related to urban legends, it was also a rather popular drama.
Now that I have arrived at the "Golden Night Building", I have finally found this feeling of "glamorous fish". Moreover, "Golden Night Mansion" is a very typical Hong Kong-style zhiwei: it is not as bloody as a zombie movie, nor is it as depressing as a Japanese ghost movie, it is connected to reality everywhere, talking about people's hearts and worldly conditions.
Tips: The following contains spoilers for two seasons
Born in a forgotten corner
Urban weird
We are all familiar with urban legends. Behind every high-speed city, there are always some victims. It has witnessed history, but it has slipped at breakneck speed. And strange talk breeds from these corners.
The story of "Golden Night Building" was born in this context. It is about various supernatural events that take place in a dilapidated building.
The main line of the two seasons is the love of the male and female protagonists (both played by Chen Shancong and Li Shiwei, the identities of the two seasons are different), but they string together the building one by one, one thing at a time.
I remember watching the first season, I was immediately brought into the drama by the gloomy atmosphere of this building.
In fact, this building has a prototype.
It was the Champagne Building in Hong Kong, completed in 1957, and was the tallest building in Kowloon at the time. When it was first built, it was quite beautiful.
Downstairs is a shopping mall, many people will come to buy cameras, custom suits, cheongsam.
There are nightclubs for the rich to entertain.
Upstairs are residences, some with three or four rooms, which are considered mansions.
However, with the economic development of Hong Kong and the construction of more and more new buildings, the Champagne Building declined, from the most brilliant building in the past to a gathering place for "one phoenix on the first floor" and black workers.
The mansions were also demolished into small subdivided houses for rent.
Then last year, the Champagne Building was applied for a strong auction. Once the auction is completed, the building is demolished and ceases to exist.
The entire process of change of the Champagne Building from glory to decline has been completely restored by "The Golden Night Building".
In the first season, the male protagonist Ah Xiao is the security guard of the Golden Night Building, where he meets Alex, the heroine who is a flight attendant. Then it is found that the two originally had a marriage in the past life, Alex was a dance hall lady coco in the Golden Night Building in her previous life, and she and Ah Xiao's past life Xuhui had an unresolved relationship.
In the second season, although the identities of the two protagonists are different. However, the plot of the building being forcibly filmed appears in the mirror world.
The acquired consortium used various extreme methods to force the relocation, causing the residents of the building to complain.
The two seasons of "Golden Night Building" are the fate of the male and female protagonists, and the past and present lives of this building. Although the story of past lives and this life is fictional, it has a sense of reality because of the background of the Golden Night Building.
A building with a history must have hidden many secrets: where the dancers of the dance hall went later; what happened to the residents of the subdivided rooms...
The plot of "Golden Night Mansion" seems to be fantastic and mysterious, but in fact, it is not overhead. They are all microcosm of the times.
The supernatural story of the mansion
In fact, it is the underlying sentient beings
The Golden Night Building, which has been coming for decades, is inhabited by all kinds of people.
In the 1960s, there were dancers and gangsters; in modern times, most of the people living in the mansions and subdivided houses were on the ground floor: some people did private photographs, some people opened underground spiritual halls, some people liked to be friends with dolls, and some people loved the same hourly room for five years...
The supernatural stories in the mansion are actually the "sentient beings" of these guests. Greed and resentment. Those scary, terrifying things come from twisted hearts.
For example, the desire for money.
At the beginning of the first season, the male protagonist Ah Xiao said that the Hong Kong property market is the most terrifying and magical ghost story.
With a monthly payment of more than 10,000 yuan, you can only afford to buy a small "nano building".
For a suite, everyone is like crazy, and some people even "don't even want to die".
The first unit of the second season, "Seventh Floor and a Half", which scares people into drinking bubble tea, tells such a story of "people dying for money".
The Chen family, who lives on the 9th floor of the Golden Night Building, opens the "Underground Spiritual Hall".
Grandpa Chen Shengli, fifty years ago, together with Bai Wei and two other friends, bought the unit that Jinxiao now used to open the Spirit Hall and signed a long-lived deed. Of the four, whoever survives to the end will have ownership of the house.
Fifty years ago, this house, worth only thirty or forty thousand, has now appreciated to more than ten million.
Among the four people, Chen Shengli and Bai Wei were left without dying.
Bai Wei was already terminally ill, and first aid had been done several times. Chen Shengli's family naturally thought that the house would be theirs.
For this reason, the Chen family looked forward to Bai Wei's "death" every day.
But who would have thought that at the time of Bai Wei's death, Chen Shengli, who was originally in good health, had an accident because of gluttony and secretly drank bubble tea late at night.
Chen Shengli's son and grandson, after discovering that their father died unexpectedly, not only did not call the police. Instead, in order to get the house, he tried to hide the fact that Chen Shengli had died.
They put on makeup for the dead Chen Shengli and tied chen Shengli, who was "cheating corpses", to hide the truth until Bai Wei died and took ownership of the house.
Isn't that ridiculous?
The people who died were their grandfathers and fathers, and not only were they not sad, but they also wanted to exchange the death of their loved ones for profit.
In front of the house, there is no family affection or friendship to speak of. The Chen family is very mad, but are they not victims of the infinite expansion of the property market?
When everything in society is measured by money, should life also be put on the scale?
In addition to money breeding greed, "The Golden Night Mansion" has many supernatural stories, which are related to [deformed family relationships]: mothers and daughters who have symbiotic relationships and love and kill each other, and mothers who have yizi become crazy to seize other people's families.
Among them, what I personally feel most deeply is the first season of "Crow Crow".
Crow Wu is a "monster" that is passed down by word of mouth in Cantonese-speaking areas. When I was a child, I heard my family tell me that if you don't obey, you will be arrested by the "crow crow".
"Crow Crow" was my childhood nightmare, watching "Golden Night Mansion", I was really shocked.
This unit is about a child who lives in the subdivided room of the Golden Night Building and is neglected to take care of him.
Dongdong's father was a tour bus driver and his mother was an employee of a pyramid scheme company.
The parents did not have a good relationship, and the mother hated that the father was not motivated, so she left the house. Dad had been busy with work and didn't have time to spend with Dongdong.
Many times, Dongdong can only play table tennis alone in the basement of the Golden Night Building.
Lonely, with no one to accompany.
Parents didn't care about how they felt.
Mom wanted Dongdong to go to a prestigious school so that he would "soar" in the future and not have to live in a subdivided house like his father.
Although Dad didn't ask for him, he didn't have a good chat with him.
In order to reunite his parents, Dongdong promised his mother to go to a prestigious school. Before the interview, he worked very hard to memorize English poems, he believed what his mother said, hard work is rewarded, he worked hard to reconcile his parents, and he worked hard to enter a good school and have a bright future.
However, before the entrance examination, he learned the truth from friends - the so-called "famous school" was not about the intellectual level of the students, but the family situation of the students.
His friend's father donated $1 million to the school, and on this premise, the exam was nothing more than a formality.
After learning the truth, Dongdong messed up the exam and angered his mother.
Dad was also drunk because of this incident.
Abandoned again, Dongdong saw crows in the basement. He voluntarily walked with the crow, because the world of the crow is a different dimension without the pressure of further education and does not need to grow up.
Later, Dongdong's parents found Yawu and hoped to take Dongdong away.
But Dongdong rejected his parents.
"It's too hard to be an adult, and I don't want to grow up."
In the end, Raven Wu used his abilities to erase the memories of everyone in the Golden Night Building. The only thing that remembers Dongdong's existence is his father, his "incompetent" father who has no requirements for Dongdong but only wants him to be happy and healthy.
An ironic story.
It is not the crows that take away the east, but the society that squeezes manpower and erases nature.
Can effort change the status quo? Can reading change your destiny?
We don't have the answers ourselves, so why should we ask our children to believe them?
The story of "Golden Night Mansion" is very mysterious, but it reflects the dark side of our society.
And what happened in this building is not all sad things, and some of them can [overcome the demons]: the live broadcast girl who lives in the subdivided room finally finds her dream of being a singer; the otaku who runs a mobile phone shop uses courage to find true love...
In these two seasons, my personal favorite at present is also a relatively light and funny story - "Kinding".
"Kinding" is about a cursed man, Cai San.
His ancestors, because of playing with feelings, were cursed by a dancer that their children and grandchildren of the Cai family could not get true love.
As a result, Cai San was born with a "divine power". Every woman who has a relationship with him will quickly find the "Golden Turtle Wife".
Cai San is another playboy who has only one-night stands and no regular partner for years. Then, the legend about his "Kinding" spread. A lot of people want to try it out with him and see if it's that magical.
In the beginning, Cai San was happy to accompany him.
But then, as social media spread more and more exaggerated, his reputation grew, and he began to fear it.
And Cai San, the reason why he is so promiscuous, is because he has always had a person in his heart who can't let go, that is, his girlfriend carmen in college. They were together for seven years, eventually separated because Cai San did not keep up with the pace of each other's growth.
The two later reunited at a friend's wedding, and Carmen was single for a long time after separating. In order to help Carmen get rid of the single to make up for the mistakes of the year, the two had a relationship again. Then, Carmen did meet a nine-hundred-million-dollar "domineering president."
True love wants to marry, and the groom is not me.
Frustrated, Cai San plans to quit the love scene, and even return the hourly room that has been rented for five years.
As a result, Carmen was there waiting for him.
Carmen told him that she had always thought that the person she liked was still him. When the domineering president proposed to her, she finally understood her true heart. She had a relationship with him, not because she wanted to marry a golden turtle son-in-law, but because she really loved him.
Thus, the story ushered in happy, and Cai San and Carmen reunited, unashamedly together.
The unit of "Jinding" is the most innocent story in "Jinxiao Mansion".
It looks like an adult version of a fairy tale: true love can overcome curses, and sincerity is more important than money.
But I personally like this kind of fantasy story with a warm background.
Sometimes life is about choice, a thought of heaven, a thought of hell, whether it is light or falling, whether to succumb to desire or embrace the true heart, lies in this thought.
Why did the psychic film become a hit?
What cannot be controlled is autonomous consciousness; what cannot be explained scientifically is the human mind.
This is the core of fantasy films and supernatural dramas.
The reason why "Golden Night Mansion" will become a Hong Kong drama hit is because it dares to look directly at people's hearts and dare to face the dark side of the world.
The background of "Golden Night Building" is a forgotten dark corner under the change of times.
The story of "Golden Night Mansion" is the dark place of human nature, the inflated desires and evil thoughts.
These things are so dark, so dark that they are frightening.
But if we can't face it, we don't know how to deal with it.
Just like the main line of the first season of "Golden Night Mansion", the male protagonist Ah Xiao discovers that it is because of his greed for money in his past life that he finally killed Coco.
He wants to atone for his sins and risk his life to travel to the past, although in the end there is no way to save Coco, but he triggers the butterfly effect because of his good intentions.
Finally, in a certain time and space, I met the heroine again.
He didn't change his fate and that of Coco.
However, in his own time and space, he chose kindness and bravery.
In the face of darkness, do our best and keep the bottom line, this is what each of us can do. We don't have to save the world, we just have to defend ourselves.
The supernatural theme, which seems to be terrifying, is actually just a mirror.
It reminds us to be restrained, to be rational, not to indulge our desires and to make ourselves monsters in the mirror.
But it is a pity that our internal entertainment has not been able to shoot this kind of subject.
It's not a lack of material.
It's that we're too afraid of reality.
Every scene has to be glamorous.
Everyone has to grind the skin ten levels of white and tender.
Those that are ugly, we choose to turn a blind eye; those that are evil, we act as if they did not exist.
As a result, film and television dramas became utopias.
The reality, on the other hand, is more magical than "Golden Night Building".